Another Cross-Country Trip...

You don't realize that I threw the initial part of the previous post on Comet Ison together after waking up too early for a flight to Chicago, and had a few minutes to post.  Yes, I'm back in Illinois, following Melinda who traveled here last week to help with her sister's estate details.  My travel ON Thanksgiving was planned so I could work a few hours this week...  We normally avoid the zoo of travel so near one of the major holidays, but the fares were inexpensive, and took the jump.  I'm sorta glad I did!  The plane, while not empty by any means, was also far from full, about 3/4 occupied, so I had an empty seat beside me, allowing a lot of casual viewing of the countryside rolling by, since I could move away from the window - normally the window is at elbow height and difficult to look thru if the center seat is taken.

Since the FAA allowed electronics on during all phases of the flight (except cell phones), for the first time I didn't feel guilty about sneaking photos during take off and landing.  They had always said that anything with a switch had to be turned off, including cameras, which always seemed silly to me...  Anyway, I shot with impunity this trip, spying a lot of landmarks we had flown over previous trips, so I shot with impunity and with the use of Google Maps, found all of the locations of the images!  At left is an HDR image of the plane at the gate with the sun emerging behind the jet way.  At right is the view from my seat - if I had been sitting any further back, I would have been in the trunk!  I had a nice view of the engine intake, but had a little angle of visibility in front of it before the wing occulted...  In this shot, taken as we took off, shows the older village of Summit, with distant copper mines in the eastern foothills of the Sierrita Mountains in the background.

After turning northeast after passing the town of Willcox, highly visible next to its dry lake bed (and missing what was likely a great view of the LBT telescope out the left side of the plane), I sort of got lost for a bit, but we passed some interesting landmarks, including snow-covered peaks, coming out in known territory again over Socorro in the Rio Grande Valley in west-central New Mexico.  Backtracking slightly, I located the snow-capped peak as South Baldy in the Magdalena Mountains - home of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory, operated by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.  I had passed it several times before and saw a linear feature atop the peak and wondered what it was - a landing strip for alien craft?  No, it was an optical interferometer - a 10-telescope array working together for ultra-high resolution imaging.  It also has a 2.4 meter telescope visible in the left image for more conventional observing atop the 10,600 foot elevation peak.  A bit further along, still in the Magdalena Mountains, I captured an interesting effect, and had to show it off in stereo.  While the mountain had received snow in the recent storms, in the intervening 4 days, it had melted off the south-facing slopes, but remained on the northern slopes.  Shown at right is a cross-eyed stereo view - cross your eyes slightly to look at the left picture w.right eye, and vice-versa.  You should see a center image that reveals depth.  You can try it on the small images here, or click the image for the full-resolution view.  I took these pictures a few seconds apart from the moving plane to provide the baseline for the stereo image...

A bit further along, among an array of irrigated circular fields (circular because they are irrigated from a central well), One field looked strange because of its shape resembling Micky Mouse smoking a cigar!  Surely I wouldn't be able to identify a single anonymous field among thousands located through the west, right?  Well you would be wrong!  Looking at the numerous pics I took and their time stamp, I had happened to take a picture of a town at a major crossroads - I was thinking that it might be Dalhart, Texas, a town I drove through many times on the diagonal road Highway 54, the shortcut from Tucson to the Midwest.  Well, the town wasn't Dalhart, but smaller Stratford, Texas, taken a minute before the Micky field.  Looking through Google Maps, sure enough, I located the ranch just left of Mickey's cigar, then realized the Google picture had been taken just after the field had been plowed or planted, but is easily recognized in the bad screen shot at right.  It is a couple miles east and north of Stratford, and just on top of the left picture is the venerable Highway 54 that I've been on so many times and was paralleling our path on this section of the flight...

Just about the time we hit the Oklahoma/Kansas border, we had some cirrus clouds below us.  It was interesting to see the wisps of "mare's tails" below us rather than above, but it was at this moment that the Subsun appeared. I blogged about this our last trip, as I had never seen it before, and here it is again, this time accompanied by a Subsundog!  The smeared-out image of the sun at right is reflected off flat ice crystals partially aligned and forming a reflection as if off a body of water or other reflector.  The effect was only visible for less than a half minute this time, but there had been no appearance of the sundog image before...

It cleared again and we were lost somewhere over central Kansas.  No towns large enough to provide IDs, but there were a number of reservoirs, including this one.  Again, a little searching on Google Maps identified it as Marion Reservoir, North of Wichita and west of Emporia, Kansas.  A short time later we passed a large meandering river that had to be the Missouri, with a big airport that again, I had seen before.  I likely would have known at the time which city it was, but Kansas City was barely visible, nearly lost in the mist.  I should likely note what I've done to these pictures in Photoshop.  The images, particularly of the reservoir look pretty manipulated, but really aren't much.  The photos are adjusted in levels to stretch the images properly from black to white.  I sometimes increase the color saturation a little, then dial back the blue that tends to accumulate by atmospheric scattering, and that is it...

I think I fell asleep for a short time, because I seems to have missed the Mississippi crossing, but awoke in time to catch an almost breathtaking vista of a large river and backwater, seemingly ice-covered that had blotches on it...  Hard to tell from 30,000 feet, but it looks like there are patches where the snow was blown off in spots, or where ice was blown before the wind to make the effect.  I'm thinking they are patches of wind-cleared snow off the ice.  The spot is on Senachwine Lake off the Illinois river, north of Peoria and southeast of Davenport. Be sure to click on the image for the full-sized view - it really is cool!

Finally we neared our destination, and as usual, flew towards the lake and turned west towards O'Hare.  Fortunately, we banked hard with the downtown skyline right outside my window!  The view reaches from Adler Planetarium and Shedd Aquarium at far right to Navy Pier on the left.  Unfortunately, the John Hancock building is out of the field to the left, but the Willis Tower is on the right.  Recently in the news for the competition of the country's tallest building, it was determined that the antenna installed in 2000 was not a permanent part of the building, so One World Trade Canter's spire, topping out at 1776 feet was the tallest structure, dropping Willis to second place...

So it was a great trip - I don't see why everyone isn't glued to the plane windows as we fly over the country!  We landed a few minutes early, but then had a LONG taxi to the gate.  Melinda picked me up and whisked me off to a great Thanksgiving feast at in-laws Maj and Jeff's house, the hard part of the trip over...